Why are you applying?

[CreativeDestruction]

I've spoken with a lot of departments that mention the need for good teachers and teaching aptitutude. Only four people are getting a PhD strictly out of love of teaching. I sense a market that's not clearing.

[asquare]

I'm in the "just love economics" camp, even having discovered that the economics I loved as an undergrad -- the economics that drew me to grad school -- is not the same economics as one studies in grad school!

There's a great little book called "Passion and Craft" that is a collection of essays by famous economists about how and why they work. It's a great read and I recommend it for everyone here. One of the essays is by Susan Rose-Ackerman. In explaining how she became an economist, she says,

I was attracted by the paradox of parsimonious formal models explaining a messy economic and social world. Economics seemed a way to put sentimentality in its place, a way to use logic to explain the seemingly absurd. I liked both the substantive problems and the rationalistic methods.

For me, that sums up pretty well why I love economics. Going to graduate school in economics is taking things one step further. I did it because I want to have the tools and the theoretical foundations to answer the questions I'm passionate about, and because I want to have the credibility to convince other people that the answers I come up with can lead to policies that make the world a better place.

[Antichron]

That's a great quote, asquare. :-)

[butler blue]

Indeed it is. That is why I gravitate to economics as well.